Ken Williams: The Story of Two Women, Part I

http://www.noozhawk.com/noozhawk/article/021710_ken_williams_the_story_of_two_women_part_i/

By Ken Williams, Noozhawk Columnist

'Kathy' battles addiction and her demons within, and emerges from a hellish existence

[Noozhawk’s note: This is the first essay in a two-part series. Click here for the second essay.]

“Kathy” and “Danny” are two women of the streets who share that commonality but with radically different outcomes. Kathy’s story illustrates that lives can and are saved when lifelines are there to help them, even against all rational odds. These same desperate lives can have tragic outcomes without a helping hand in a moment of crisis.

Pain leaked from Kathy’s pale blue eyes despite her best efforts to hide it. Her blond hair softly framed her face, cushioning the hurt that lashed out from her. Everything moved slowly, awkwardly. The early morning having robbed the streets of sound intensified the emotions of this fragile woman.

I was tense at first, feeling the wounded soul who sat across from me. Then I caught myself. She was anything but fragile. She was a courageous woman, one who had been through hell and emerged from the other side stronger for the struggle.

I looked closer, looking for the woman I used to know. For more years than I care to count, I would steel myself when visiting the homeless camps, afraid of finding Kathy’s body. She was always at the top of my list of those who I feared would have died overnight.

For years this woman was driven to drugs and alcohol by a hellish life and the terrors of the symptoms of her mental illness — and by emotional scars that tore at her soul and that had propelled her to the streets in the first place. I also feared she would fall victim to the sick men who hunted vulnerable street women. Or that she would hurt herself to quiet the raging voices and psychological wounds. Or that she would simply go to sleep and never wake up.

In her days on the streets, she could evoke deep emotional pain within me whenever I ran into her and was unable to persuade her to abandon the streets and come into the shelter system. I knew well that in some ways, the shelters were pretty bad choices for her needs. I also recognized how much more vicious the streets can be for the mentally ill, women, the elderly, veterans, people who are sick or wounded, and displaced workers. I wish deeply for an alternative, but there isn’t one. The government and society have taken all other options away from people like her.

Incredibly, over time she found the courage — a great deal of it — and fought through everything that was thrown at her. With the help of the Santa Barbara Rescue Mission and others who never gave up on her, she fought through the hell that was her life.

Looking across to her now, again I had to struggle to remember the wounded — and, in a very real sense, hunted — woman she used to be. I sit back, thinking about how much courage she had to arrive where she was this morning. It would have been so simple for her to give up, to end her life in a haze of numbing drugs and alcohol. But she didn’t.

She endured the painful withdrawal from the life of drugs and alcohol. She didn’t vanquish the demons that had driven her to the streets in the first place, but she did manage to fight them to a standstill. A fight that I can see in her troubled eyes is a daily struggle for her.

I have never been privileged to know a more courageous person. For the 100th time, she and others like her show me that no person is without hope, that even the hard-core alcoholic or drug addict can struggle back. That they, the survivors, are so much stronger than I am, having fought through a hellish existence that I can only begin to image. They have so much to teach me, to teach all of us.

I’m proud to call Kathy my friend. I am humbled by her life journey, and by her struggles, pains and triumphs. This remarkable woman has been clean and sober for more than 2½ years. She has reconnected with family and, with trepidation and courage, faces a life free of the slavery of addiction.

Thank you, Kathy, a friend I deeply honor and respect — in fact, stand in awe of.

— Ken Williams has been a social worker for the homeless for the last 30 years. He is the author of China White and Shattered Dreams, A Story of the Streets.

http://www.noozhawk.com/noozhawk/article/021710_ken_williams_the_story_of_two_women_part_i/